


Burn the Ashes

by eosaurora13



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Amnesia, Infinity Gems, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-13
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-17 04:23:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2296523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eosaurora13/pseuds/eosaurora13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a timeline where Captain America dies on the helicarrier, the Winter Soldier is offered a chance to undo it.  Change the past.  But the next thing he remembers isn't going back in time.  It's the future he went back to create and he has to learn to survive in a world where the Winter Soldier never existed, leaving Steve and the rest of the Avengers to piece together what happened from the few clues they have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“James Buchanan Barnes.” His target had named him. But those words meant nothing. They spelled out a name but it wasn’t his. He didn’t remember his name. No, that wasn’t right. He couldn’t remember his name. It was there in his mind, floating just out of reach. At any other moment, he would have dived after it, searching, searching. Because he needed to know. They’d taken everything from him and he wanted something back.

He wanted-

But he couldn’t focus on that now. Now, who he was wasn’t important. He let the thought drift away for him to try to catch sometime later. All his energy, all his thought, was directed at the man he was dragging to shore, the man who’d so adamantly named him.

There was a hollowed out hole in his gut that he couldn’t place, couldn’t name anymore than he could name himself, but it had settled in as he watched the man, his mission, fall hundreds of feet down into the water below. Without understanding why, he had let go of the burning wreckage of the last of three helicarriers remaining in the air, machines he was supposed to have defended. They were supposed to keep flying.

They told him his target was going after those helicarriers and he had to be stopped at all costs.

But that didn’t matter anymore.

All that mattered was getting rid of the awful feeling, the feeling that he’d forgotten something, something so basic that it should have been ingrained in his DNA, something that he almost remembered had given him purpose sometime before…now. So he fell into the water after his target. His mission. Those were his words that he’d pummeled into his target’s face, over and over again, and yet they meant just as little as the name he’d been given in return.

Hitting the water knocked the breath out of his lungs and he struggled for a second against the overwhelming urge to breathe. Although taking in a lungful of water wouldn’t kill him, it would incapacitate him more than he already was. Pain shot up through his neck from his broken arm and he had to force his legs to propel him deeper. The self-preservation instinct screamed at him to stop but he gritted his teeth and kept going. Only after he’d threaded his fingers through his target’s uniform did he let that instinct take over and help him haul both of their broken bodies to shore.

Water poured off them as he staggered onto land. He let his target go, his unconscious body falling softly against the wet earth. The fire in his arm faded slowly, dulling to an ache. He paused and examined his target for signs of life, anything to reassure him the man would live. That he’d be all right. But there was nothing, no rise and fall of his chest, no soft exhalation of air or coughing up water. Desperation clawed out of his chest, driving him. He fell to his knees, ignoring the water and mud seeping through the already soaked fabric, and for several minutes the world faded as he attempted CPR.

But the frantic mouth-to-mouth, the desperate, rough, almost angry chest compressions, did nothing. His target didn’t miraculously resume breathing. He glanced down to his target’s abdomen, to the bullet holes he had given him, and he realized blood had long since stopped pumping.

His target was dead.

The grim satisfaction he normally felt after a mission didn’t come. Instead, the hollowness from before swelled, mixed with his desperation, and threatened to consume him. He couldn’t understand the difference, why the death of this man bothered him when the deaths of countless others didn’t. 

His mind wouldn’t figure it out. It shut down any attempt he made to try. All he knew, all he could know, was that the man in from of him was dead and he died by his hands. And it was wrong.

His hands stilled over his target’s now lifeless body and he racked his brain for anything else he could do to bring him back. File after file, training after training, he searched but there was nothing. There was nothing he could do and he knew it.

He collapsed back onto the damp earth and his arms fell limply into his lap. He barely noticed the chill of wet fabric on his knees and lower legs at their exposure to the brisk autumn air. Some voice called out in the back of his mind, from the same corner he thought his name was buried, begging him not to give up because whoever this man was, he refused to give up on you. That he refused to fight back when he could have was clear proof of that. But that served only to confuse him further so he ignored the voice, ignored the day’s events, choosing to stare blankly at the man before him.

How long he sat there, he had no idea. The day had turned darker when actual voices roused him from his catatonic state. He heard a twig snap but he was already on his feet, alert and listening. His training kicked in, telling him to vanish. He couldn’t be found. By the time the group of people emerged onto the riverbank, he had already slipped away into the trees.

Something kept him nearby. He had to watch the scene before him unfold. The women with red hair, another of the targets they’d given him, collapsed next to her friend, his name on her lips. She didn’t cry out or scream the name. No, she whispered the name like a prayer as if the more she said it the more likely he would wake up. 

Steve, she called him.

Hidden in the undergrowth, the Winter Soldier heard the name. It washed over him and through him. He didn’t know his own name but he knew, deep down, Steve was the name of the man on the bank, the man he killed. Long buried memories of Steve threatened to burst forth and the voice in his head roared in fury. He squeezed his eyes shut and threw his hands over his ears, hoping beyond hope the pain in his chest would go away, for the screaming in his head to stop. 

It didn’t.

Another in the group, a man he’d tried to kill but hadn’t been a target, knelt beside the woman. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and whispered something. They stood and let a group of technicians approach with a stretcher. They, and the Winter Soldier, watched as they carried Steve away. 

Suddenly the need to get away from the bank overwhelmed him. He couldn’t stand being near the body of his target—friend—any longer. He was in so much of a hurry to push himself off the ground that he didn’t realize he’d thought of the man as his friend. Leaves crinkled under his feet as he stumbled deeper into the forest but no one was listening for it. They were preoccupied with bringing their fallen comrade home.

The red-haired woman scanned the trees before she left the bank but she saw nothing. The man she could have seen was already gone.

~~~

Washington, D.C. was unkind to those who did not know its streets. It was less kind to someone like him, as if it knew what he’d done. They’d given him skills to survive. They taught him how to operate technology, how to navigate streets—how to kill, the voice added bitterly. But he had no backup, no extraction plan. He was confused and utterly lost.

He stumbled from street to street as the sun disappeared and the streetlights switched on. It took several strange looks from the homeless around him for him to realize he stood out. His daze didn’t clear. His mind was capable of one thought and one thought only: to get rid of everything that made him stand out. The weapons, the armor, everything that made him theirs, he had to get rid of. They weren’t his and they gave him away.

The clanging of a rifle in a dumpster roused him enough for him to realize he shouldn’t leave any of his gear where others might find it. He’d never cared about it before but he couldn’t justify letting the weaponry fall into innocent hands. Someone else could die.

His feet led him back to the river. It was the one path they knew. The water seeped back through the fabric of his pants and he fought to suppress the image of blood seeping through Steve’s uniform.

The voice that spent the day trying to get your attention, banging at the bars that kept it caged, screamed at him, accused him. “You killed him,” it said and its horror became his. Horror faded into anger, anger at himself, anger at his actions, anger at those who controlled his actions. He ripped every piece of equipment, every grenade, every gun, the armor they’d strapped to him—supposedly to protect him but the voice had its doubts. Each object splashed into the water and sank out of sight.

He hesitated as his fingers wrapped around the military knife, the last weapon he had. Much as he hated it, much as the voice shirked away from it, his training told him to keep one weapon. He still hesitated to call it his. Nothing they gave him was ever his. He wasn’t worth that. The equipment was theirs and so was he, as much if not more so than the equipment he’d just disposed of.

The knife though—the knife was his now. 

He slid it back into its sheath and retreated from the edge of the river, his cold, wet clothes clinging to his skin. The crisp breeze wasn’t overly cool but as it hit his clothes, it sent him into fits of shivers. He pulled the thin undershirt tighter and bit his bottom lip. He needed to find somewhere warmer, somewhere to dry off.

No one went out of their way to help him. Their eyes slid past him like he wasn’t there. A ghost he’d been called for most of his life and a ghost he’d become again. The voice that had been crying out all day slumped in its corner, wrapping around itself and all he felt was its misery.

“You’ll freeze if you don’t find warmer clothes.”

The voice, scratched and worn, a record that had been played almost too many times, broke into his thoughts. There had been no sound of anyone approaching, no creaking of opening doors. He froze, wondering how someone had managed to sneak up on him.

He turned toward the speaker, an old woman whose back was hunched over from long hours in a factory, whose wrinkled skin documented in a language all their own the toils and joys she’d seen in her life.

She added, “You at least need to dry off. You’ll catch a chill in this weather.” Her breath rattled in her chest and he narrowed his eyes. She smiled. “You know I’m dying, don’t you?”

Being called out on his knowledge gave him pause. The skills they’d instilled in him, much like the weapons he’d thrown into the river, had never felt like his yet here he was, using them to figure out an elderly woman, a bystander, an innocent, was dying of lung cancer.

She exuded a peace he almost envied. 

The voice in his head pushed that feeling, telling him that was a good thing—to feel that. But he shut the voice up and shut the feeling down. Both were distractions and he couldn’t afford either one.

“It surprises you, doesn’t it? That I’m okay with dying?” she asked.

He hesitated to reply. Any answer he gave could be the wrong one. They used to beat him for wrong answers far more than for his silence.

Her face softened. “Oh, you have been through a lot, haven’t you?” She took a step back and gave him a once over. 

He waited for the discomfort to come, for the need to suppress the desire to fidget, but there was nothing judgmental in her gaze. If anything, she eyed him with something he struggled to name. The voice whispered, “Sad. She’s sad.”

She motioned to the building behind her. “I have some old clothes my son left if you want to get rid of those wet things.” 

The voice didn’t say anything to that but it wanted him to accept the offer. Even without words, he understood what the voice wanted. It almost made him not say yes. The voice was trying to control him just like they had. But another breeze blew down the street, between the buildings. The uncontrollable shivers that wracked his body made the decision for him. 

He nodded at the woman.

She led him inside the four-story building. The layout was familiar in way he couldn’t place. Four apartments made up each floor. The woman opened the first one on the left, her hands shaking imperceptibly as she inserted the key into the lock. As the door swung open, she called out, “Aurora, we have company.”

The knowledge that there was another person in the space put him on edge. His training told him this was a trap. He was a fish and they’d hooked him. It hadn’t been a full day. How had he forgotten some of the most important parts of his training? They’d kill him for this.

But Aurora posed no immediate threat to him, he realized as she wheeled herself in her wheelchair into the entryway and stared at the older woman. Her gaze turned to him. 

He noticed the similar facial structures between her and the older woman, a mother and daughter, perhaps grandmother and granddaughter. “You’re on the news,” she commented. With great skill, she turned herself around and rolled into the living room. “Actually,” she continued, talking over the TV, “you are the news.” 

His picture on the screen drew his attention but he caught the younger woman maneuver herself from the wheelchair to the sofa using only her arms. Her legs were dead weight.

“We’re looking for this man,” a picture appeared, “who is believed to have been involved in the incident earlier today over the Potomac. He is wanted for questioning with regards to these events.”

“Guess we’re fugitives now,” Aurora remarked drily, pulling her laptop into her lap. “They want you bad.”

The older woman brought in a pile of clothes and blankets. She laid the blankets on the arm of the chair beside the sofa. “It won’t be a problem.” She held out the clothes to him. “I think these will fit. They might not be a perfect fit but they’ll do for now.”

He took the clothes from her and she motioned him into a room where he could change. He emerged moments later in a T-shirt and sweat pants, his knife tucked safely in his pocket, ready to be used at a moment’s notice. Even in this environment, he couldn’t let his guard down. 

But he had to know. “Why are you helping me?” Perfect English, no accent. Nothing that could be used to identify him or where he was from. He seemed to remember having an accent at some point but they’d beaten it out of him. He sat in the chair with the blankets but he didn’t reach for one.

Aurora exchanged a glance with the older woman, her face finally betraying some emotion. The older woman replied, “Because you need it.”

The voice in his head whispered repeatedly, “Sadsadsadsadsadsadsadsad…”

“Something happened at the river today. And believe me, we know all about what happened with those helicarriers. All of HYDRA’s data is out there online. Aurora’s been plowing through it.” She nodded to the younger woman before looking back at him. “But we don’t know all of it, I would be willing to guess.”

Even the voice in his head backed away from talking about what had happened. He couldn’t bring himself to think about Steve’s body lying there, blood soaking through his uniform. In that room though, he felt like they already knew.

He passed on eating when they offered him part of their dinner. Although the food smelled delicious, he couldn’t stomach eating it. 

When both women bid him goodnight, he panicked. His mission was over. There was nothing left to occupy his thoughts. There were no more targets, no one else to kill. Sleep never once crossed his mind. Any thought of sleep had long been wiped from his mind. The only rest he knew was ice. And ice terrified him.

With no idea of where else to go or what else to do, he stayed in the living room with the TV on. The news report from earlier in the evening had gone off. Only late night programs were still on. He watched the comedy show but nothing the comedian said made sense so he mostly ignored it. Once the infomercials started, he’d retreated so far into his mind, he no longer knew if the TV was still on.

In the relative quiet, he struggled to understand what had happened earlier on the helicarrier. He replayed the events second by second, trying to figure out why his target—Steve—had come back for him. Why he’d saved him. Why he’d stopped fighting. That more than anything whipped him into a rage and he couldn’t tell if it was all him or if the voice was fueling it.

It knew there was a reason, if he could only remember what it was.

When sleep finally came, it crept up on him, a silent and deadly predator. Away from the cryostasis chamber for the first time in his memory, his brain started the slow process of healing. It had not fallen into the warm embraces of slumber in years. It hadn’t dreamed in years and it needed to make up for lost time.

But the dreams his brain created in its twisted attempts to dredge up forgotten memories were not pleasant. He woke with a cry, the image of snow and the feeling of falling sitting at the forefront of his consciousness. A voice, not the one in his head, had called out for him. Steve’s voice.

He slumped forward in the chair, burying his head in his hands. How long he sat like that, consumed with a sense of loss so deep he was drowning in it, he had no idea but the uneasy feeling of being watched finally pulled him back to reality.

The older woman stood in the doorway, her face a mask except for a deep sadness in her eyes. “Would you fix it?” she asked.

He didn’t reply.

She asked again, more emphatically. “Would you fix it?”

Would he fix Steve dying? The voice screamed and threw itself against the bars. He needed to say yes. Even without its influence, he had to save the man he’d killed. He couldn’t fail him again.

The woman knew his answer without him having to voice it. She held out her hand, her fingers curled into a fist around something that gave off an orange glow. “Steve Rogers wasn’t meant to die today and I think you know that. Nor did you mean to kill him.” She offered him a supportive smile. “I know you don’t remember but you saved my life, many years ago. A young woman, kidnapped by an organization bent on world domination.” The orange glow filled the room as she opened her hand, its source a stone, an orange stone. “With this, you can save him. Consider it a trade. A life for a life.”

He made no move, unsure how the stone could be useful. Something about it seemed familiar but neither he nor the voice could figure out why.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” she said, ignoring how he flinched at the name. “This gift I give to you.”

The glow brightened until he could no longer see the room around him or the woman in front of him. It kept getting brighter past that and he had to shield his eyes. The light permeated everything, so bright it hurt. Then the world went black and he slipped out of consciousness.


	2. Chapter 2

He opened his eyes, only to shut them again almost immediately. The glaring light above him hurt and blurred his vision. He bit back a groan and relaxed into the bed. At least, he assumed it was a bed. Every nerve ending felt dulled, numb. He could feel but not feel. He thought he was floating.

They’d taught him in the army—or had it been them?—to examine his surroundings. He needed to get his bearing. Everything else came secondary. He couldn’t rely on sight or touch for the moment so he turned to his other senses. The air was dry, smelling so clean it was almost sterile. If he inhaled deeply, he caught a weak whiff of alcohol, not the good drinking kind either. It added to the overly cleanness of wherever he was. On no other information, he assumed he was in a hospital, or somewhere similar.

He tried to listen to what was happening around him but every sound he heard was muffled, like he was submerged in water. The only sound he could make out was the regular beeping of a nearby machine. Focusing on the timing of the beats, he matched them to his heartbeats. Further proof he was in a hospital.

It explained the rough feel of the sheets against his arms and legs. Sweet relief coursed through him as sensation of touch fully returned, a relief that the pain creeping out from his spine to his extremities cut short. But the pain helped him grapple toward being fully conscious. He embraced it.

Finally he could open his eyes and keep them open without them watering at the bright light. The view of the ceiling wasn’t an interesting one.

“We were beginning to think you would never wake up,” a man said, walking into the room. 

His brain wanted him to sit up but he struggled to move.

“Easy, your body went through serious trauma. It might not do what you want right away.” The man leaned over him and very gently raised the back of the bed so he was propped up in something resembling a sitting position. With the man’s white lab coat and thin-rimmed glasses sitting crooked on his nose, he had to be a doctor, a theory confirmed as he introduced himself as Doctor Banner but those weren’t the words that gripped his attention.

Trauma, he’d said. His body had gone through trauma. He racked his brain but couldn’t come up with anything to match what Dr. Banner had told him. The injuries he’d sustained on the helicarrier were enough to slow him down but not enough for him to categorize them as trauma. The last thing he remembered was a bright orange light and the old woman who had the power to wield it. He didn’t classify that as trauma either.

“Where am I?” he asked. The Brooklyn accent slipped out without any thought. Much to his horror, he didn’t realize it until it was far too late to correct it. It left him wondering how he knew it was a Brooklyn accent and why he’d so easily fallen into it.

Banner didn’t seem to notice. “You’re in New York,” he explained, as he checked the various machines that surrounded him. “In a private clinic owned by Tony Stark.”

Stark. The name echoed in his head. He knew the name. How did he know the name?

“What happened?” He schooled his accent to something more neutral but it wasn’t easy. The mystery of Stark he could figure out later. Figuring out what happened to him, how much time he’d missed those were top priorities.

His confusion got Banner’s attention. “You were in a plane crash.” Something was off in his voice. “You don’t remember?”

A plane crash? 

Images of helicarriers flashed before his eyes—Steve falling into the river. He squeezed his eyes shut but the images didn’t go away. “That’s not right,” he murmured, his accent still refusing to completely disappear. Warning bells were going off but he couldn’t pinpoint the reason.

Banner pursed his lips. He pulled a notepad from underneath his coat. His brow furrowed. Whatever he read, he didn’t like it. “J, can you get ahold of Dr. Callahan?”

A disembodied voice replied, “Of course, sir. Shall I have her join you?”

“If you don’t mind,” the doctor replied. 

The Winter Soldier observed the exchange curiously. Voices coming over the comm were very familiar but the technology was beyond what they had, or what they had let him use.

Banner noticed his interest, misinterpreting it as nervousness. “I’m probably not the best person to explain the advances in technology since you went under but Jarvis, well I won’t say he harmless, but he won’t hurt you. He’s the artificial intelligence who runs the operations of this building, regardless of what anyone else says.” He glanced up. “Isn’t that right, J?”

“Indeed it is, sir.” There was a trace of humor in his voice, which was strange in and of itself. If he understood the doctor correctly, Jarvis was a machine and machines didn’t have feelings. That’s what they’d told him. The voice returned a moment later. “Sir, I’m afraid Dr. Callahan is not in the building. It seems she and Agent Romanoff are at a meeting with Agent Hill.”

Banner pushed his glasses up and sighed. He muttered something about the futility of politics and bureaucracy. 

The AI didn’t miss a word though. “Shall I try calling her, sir?” 

The doctor shook his head. “Just send her a message. She’ll get it when she can.” He checked a couple more readings on the machines, his brow set in a permanent scowl. “Until she gets back,” he turned to the Winter Soldier, “I won’t risk putting anything in your system. She knows a lot more about brain chemistry than I do.” Satisfied with the readings, he slid the pad back into his coat. 

Brain chemistry, trauma. Confusion battled with fear at Banner’s words. He was missing something important beyond what he accepted as lost because of what they did. The pain had faded at least. In its absence, his limbs felt heavy and he fought the urge to sink into the bed and sleep. 

“Why don’t you tell me the last thing you remember?” Banner asked, pulling a chair up, his voice yanking sleep away, which the Winter Soldier was reluctantly thankful for.

On the surface, the doctor’s helpfulness seemed genuine. He was about as harmless as any bystander. But the warning bells refused to turn off. Banner held himself differently, his shoulders slightly slumped forward, his arms and hands kept tucked close to his body. The Winter Soldier recognized the effect of repeated conditioning.

Whatever the reason, he knew to be cautious around him.

Hesitantly, he answered the question. “An orange light.”

Banner hid his shock at the answer but not fast enough. “What orange light?” 

It was the wrong answer. He tensed, waiting for some physical retaliation, but it never came. All Banner seemed to want was an explanation. “The old woman had…” he couldn’t remembered what she had “…something.” He looked at the doctor helplessly. 

“But whatever she had, it glowed orange?”

He nodded once in a stiff, aborted motion.

“Sir, Agent Romanoff has returned from the meeting with Agent Hill,” Jarvis interrupted.

Banner looked up. “Is Dr. Callahan with her?”

“No, sir, she isn’t.”

He rubbed his eyes. “Patch me through to Romanoff.”

“Right away, sir.”

A woman’s voice came through the same sound system Jarvis’s voice did. “Can this wait, Doctor?” 

The Winter Soldier instinctively knew she was alive, not an AI, but that wasn’t what startled him. He recognized her voice. She was the woman on the beach, the woman from the bridge. Why was she here?

Banner bristled at her impatience. “No, it can’t. Where’s Callahan?”

“She had to head to DC on an urgent call. What’s got you so bothered?”

He glanced at the Winter Soldier. “Barnes woke up.”

~~~

Natasha leaned against the nurses’ station desk. She’d rushed to the hospital wing as soon as Bruce had ended the call. Shield had waited two years for Barnes to wake up, two years after they’d found him and Captain Rogers trapped in the ice. Two years after the Captain woke up. Very few still had hope Barnes would wake up at all. 

It was a testament to Stark’s security that the building wasn’t crawling with Shield personnel.

“So the prodigal son awakens,” she commented, keeping her tone light to hide her shock and her relief. And, like other Shield agents would likely be, she was very relieved.

“That may be a bit premature,” Bruce informed her. “He suffered serious trauma in the plane crash.” He scanned the folder. “Head trauma, loss of limb, broken ribs, broken ankle. He came in a walking injury.”

“All of which is common knowledge, Doctor,” Natasha remarked. She’d read the files. Most had. “Those injuries have healed.” They’d certainly had enough time to do so.

“We don’t know anything about the effects of his head trauma. Essentially, he’s been in a coma for two years.”

She crossed her arms. “Something wrong, doctor?”

He glanced to Barnes’ room. “I’m not a neurologist but the level of head trauma he sustained…at the very least, I think he’s suffering extreme amnesia.”

“At the worst?”

Bruce pursed his lips.

“Banner,” she prompted. “What’s bothering you? I haven’t seen you this rocked since New York.”

He shook his head. He wasn’t sure he could put into words what exactly he thought was wrong. Amnesia was bad enough but he didn’t think that was the issue. Not completely. Instead, he just said, “Go and see for yourself.”

She pushed herself away from the desk. “Have you notified Rogers yet?”

Bruce told her he hadn’t. “He’s still out on assignment. Helping bring in tech from New York.”

Natasha’s eyes widened. “Still? I thought Sitwell had gotten the last of that. With some bank robbing couple down in Miami.”

“So did I,” Bruce admitted. “But the call came in earlier this week and away he went.”

She looked to Barnes’ room. “As soon as he gets back into contact range, make sure he knows.” Banner almost didn’t hear what she said next. “He’s waited long enough.” She squared her shoulders. “Here goes nothing.” She left Banner at the station and knocked on the door, calling out, “Can I come in?” 

Bruce couldn’t hear if a voice answered her from the other side or not but Natasha opened the door and walked inside.

Natasha would never be comfortable in hospital rooms, not even the ones in Stark Tower. Avengers Tower, she corrected silently. The name change still hadn’t stuck with her yet. The building started out as Stark Tower so Stark Tower it stayed in her mind.

Barnes sat propped up in the hospital bed. He was still too pale, his skin a little too sunken in. The two years they’d waited for him to wake up hadn’t treated him well.

“Welcome back to the living, Sergeant,” she said. “We were beginning to think you weren’t going to wake up.”

She expected confusion, frustration, anger, resignation. She expected Barnes to react the way Steve had. The way Barnes stared at her warily, an animal cornered, waiting for its chance to escape—she knew that look but she never thought to see it on someone like him.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

The question startled her so much, she only belatedly realized he’d asked in flawless Russian.

She crossed the room to sit in the chair Banner had pulled over. If Barnes wanted to speak in Russian, she was too happy to oblige. “Well, that depends. What do you think I’m doing here?” She offered him a disarming smile. Steady on Natasha, she scolded herself. She was too out of practice if a recent coma patient could throw her with a little Russian.

She had no effect on him. “You were there.” His words bit into her, harsh and accusing. 

“I was where?” Although she understood his words, they were having two different conversations. Or, Barnes was having a conversation all his own and she was struggling to catch up. She resisted the urge to sigh. Banner was right. They weren’t qualified to deal with this. 

“At the river.”

Natasha’s mind raced. What river? “Sergeant, wherever you think you saw me, it didn’t happen. You’ve been frozen for close to seventy years. The first time you’ve been awake in my lifetime is right now.”

Barnes shifted on the bed, his features contorting in pain. “Don’t lie to me!” he ground out. 

She took a step backward, partly instinctual, partly in memory of another person screaming similar words at her. Banner had had control over his anger in their first encounter. Barnes was terrified; he had no such control. 

He stared out the window, whispering about Hydra and Shield and helicarriers.

She needed to get through to him. “Why do you think I’m lying to you?” 

“Because I saw you.” Emotionless, matter-of-fact. He didn’t turn away from the window.

What he was saying was impossible. But the more information he gave her, however crazy she thought it, the more it would help them figure out what was going on. “Where did you see me? What river?” she pressed.

He stayed silent.

“Sergeant, help me out. I’m operating with limited intel.”

“Stop calling me that,” he snapped, finally meeting her gaze, his haunted eyes boring into her.

Natasha was at a loss. She’d interrogated more people in her life than she cared to count but she’d never talked to someone like Barnes. She shrugged, hoping to diffuse the tension. “Fine. What do you want me to call you?”

Barnes didn’t have an answer. Banner had mentioned amnesia. Had Barnes’ amnesia gone back so far that he’d forgotten who he was? Why did he feel like her knew her? Something else was bothering her but she wouldn’t figure it out here. She couldn’t devote enough brain power to it.

“Okay, Sarge,” she spoke into the uncomfortable silence. “Think on that for a minute and maybe we can talk later. Dr. Banner probably needs to check on you.” She fled the room before Barnes had time to protest or argue.

Banner was waiting outside. 

She nodded. “I think I understand your meaning, Doctor.”

“What happened in there?” he asked her, his concern so different from his mistrust when they’d first met.

She threw a glance over her shoulder at the door. “Did Barnes have any language proficiency prior to the plane crash?”

Banner flipped through his file. “Some,” he replied. “Fluent in German, basics in Russian, French, and Italian.” He looked over his glasses at her. “Why?”

“He just held a full conversation with me in Russian. Perfect, no accent. If he only knows the basics, how the hell could he do that?”

He watched as she quivered in place. “What else?”

She started pacing. Ten steps forward, turn, ten steps back. If she paced long enough, she could wear a hole in the floor. Her mind raced, playing the conversation on repeat. What else had bothered her? What wasn’t she noticing?

“The way he spoke Russian,” she muttered. That was it. She pushed past Bruce to pull up the video on the computer. With him looking over her shoulder, she rewound her conversation with Barnes. “You hear the way he’s talking?” 

He hummed an affirmative.

She turned to look at him, her hands still poised on the keyboard, and she spoke a long stream of Russian in the exact same manner. Perfect, grammatically correct, no accent. 

“Which means what?” he asked.

She twisted back to focus on the computer screen. “It means that’s KGB training, which, unless he’s time travelled, is impossible for him to have had.” She shut the screen off and stood up. “Doctor, what’s going on here?”

Banner didn’t have an answer nor did she expect him to. “Has he noticed his arm yet?”

The question surprised her. “No…,” she answered. “But the way he moved, it was like he already knew it was gone.” She ran her hand down her face. “I’ll get Fury on the phone, have him pull Rogers out,” she told Bruce finally. If anyone could decipher Barnes, it’d be his best friend.

Bruce started towards the door.

“You sure that’s a good idea, Doc?” 

“Not at all,” he replied with a quick grin, gone before she even had a decent chance to see it.

She didn’t realize how hard she was gripping the counter until the door clicked shut.

~~~

He relaxed against the bed when the woman left the room. The only data he had for her was from the fight on the bridge and vaguely from another mission before that. And the river’s edge. Seeing her collapsed and crying, praying Steve wasn’t dead, had seared itself into his mind. 

That wasn’t who had come in to talk to him. Her eyes were bright, alert and she matched him word for word in Russian, a language he’d defaulted to in an effort to hide his accented English. He struggled to understand the discrepancy in her behavior. They trained him to determine minute changes in a target’s emotional state to further his advantage in the field. The woman he talked to hadn’t suffered the same grief.

She looked the same, sounded the same, but she was not the same woman.

He threw the covers back and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. The world spun as he sat up. He leaned over, controlling his breathing until his vision cleared.

As far as he had seen, there were no guards and almost no staff, aside from Dr. Banner and the woman. Escape would be easy.

He shifted to stand up, prompting the AI to comment, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, sir. Your blood pressure is still dangerously low. Attempting to stand will most likely lead to dizziness, lightheadedness, and the possibility of fainting.”

Dr. Banner opened the door. “I’d listen to him. He’s taken care of Stark for years. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a better doctor than I am.”

He froze on the edge of the bed. The need to escape almost overrode the sound advice Jarvis gave him.

“If you’re so gung-ho to get up, at least let me help you,” Banner said, walking over.

He flinched from Banner’s open hand. Despite the doctor’s warning, he slid off the bed, his feet hitting the cold tile floor.

Banner hovered a couple of steps away with his hands outstretched but he refrained from actually supporting him. 

The first few seconds after he stood, nothing happened then without warning, he fell apart. The room spun. Everywhere he looked, objects had auras, giving off their own light. He saw double, triple. His vision narrowed, the edges blacking out. 

Banner’s hands came out of nowhere, guiding him back onto the bed. The doctor spoke words but he couldn’t understand them. He reached out, searching for something to grab hold of, but the prosthetic arm he’d grown so accustomed to wasn’t there. Where the prosthetic should have been, or where an arm should have been, there was nothing.

The panic that rose out of his stomach tasted like bile. It forced breath into and out of his body far faster than he could tolerate. Numbness crept from his extremities as he hyperventilated. 

“Come on, Barnes, stay with me.” Banner’s voice cut through, soft but very, very urgent. “Slow your breathing down.”

He tried.

But his body couldn’t handle the stress. His vision snapped to black and he fell limp against bed. 

Banner’s frantic attempts to revive him went unnoticed.


	3. Chapter 3

“Steve, you need to get back as soon as possible. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

Steve shut the video playback off and leaned back in his seat. The priority message from Romanoff had come in only an hour earlier and he’d lost count of how many times he’d played it. The one thing he’d held out for, that Bucky would wake up and he wouldn’t have to live in a still strange world alone, Romanoff had yanked out from under him. She hadn’t sugarcoated anything, giving it to him blunt and direct.

He appreciated that. Working with Shield, dealing with Fury’s secrets day in and day out, wore on him. 

At least they were heading back to New York, the Chitauri artifact safely stowed aboard their aircraft. Mission successful. 

“ETA just under two hours, Captain,” Brock Rumlow informed him, striding up the ramp from the cargo bay. “We’re cleared to land at the Tower.”

Steve pushed the chair away from the terminal. “Is the artifact secure?”

Rumlow nodded. “Bagged, tagged, and ready to be shipped to the Fridge.” His gaze followed Steve as the latter stood and paced in front of the computer terminal. “Sir, why are we flying to New York first?”

Natasha’s message had top-level encryption, for Steve’s eyes only. Fury could crack the encryption if he desired but the buck stopped there. No one else knew yet about Bucky and he hesitated to change that especially if what Natasha said was accurate.

He scoffed. “If”… He knew it was.

“Priority message from Romanoff,” he explained. “Probably something of Stark’s wreaking havoc.”

Rumlow chuckled. “That would do it.” The incident that occurred just under a year prior where Stark ended up rescuing the kidnapped President was fresh in both of their minds. Wherever Stark went, explosions and destruction were usually right behind him. In that regard, Tony wasn’t all that different from his father, especially if what Steve had read about Howard’s exploits after he’d gone under the ice was accurate. “Don’t worry, sir,” Rumlow finally added into the silence. “We’ll get you back in time for some action.”

“Not like we didn’t just see plenty of action,” Steve countered, drawing a bark of a laugh from Rumlow.

“Here I thought you liked that.”

Steve plastered a false smile on his face. The attitude was a common one and he’d given up trying to change it. Captain America was a soldier. Why wouldn’t he like action? “It has its uses,” he said instead.

His response satisfied Rumlow. “Well, if you need me, I’ll be up in the cockpit.” The strike team officer left the terminal room, leaving Steve alone with his thoughts.

He hated lying. It put him on the same level as the rest of Shield, always keeping secrets. But he trusted Natasha’s judgment in cases like this. He could see fifteen or twenty moves ahead; she saw maybe twice that far. And keeping Bucky’s situation under wraps until they’d figured out what exactly that situation was would be beneficial for everyone.

He hoped.

Natasha’s words resonated in the silence as he sank back into the chair, running a hand down his face. Amnesia, brain trauma. When he closed his eyes, he could still see Bucky falling against the bulkhead as the plane shuddered. He hadn’t gotten up and Steve hadn’t had the chance to stop the bleeding before the aircraft sank into the ice. 

He thought Bucky had died in the crash, whether from the head wound or the trauma of the crash itself. The relief he felt when Fury told him Bucky was alive and his wounds healing stayed with him, even two years later, though he couldn’t quite call on it at the moment, dulled as it was with worry.

Not that anyone would see it if they looked at him. He had tells when he was preoccupied, or so Natasha told him, but she was the only one who saw them. Rumlow simply nodded when Steve disembarked at Stark Tower, no more the wiser of Steve’s inner turmoil.

Even after the jet lifted off the landing pad, Steve didn’t let his façade drop. 

“Welcome back, Captain,” Jarvis greeted him as he walked inside.

Steve kept walking. “Thanks, Jarvis. Can you patch me through to Agent Romanoff?”

“Of course, sir.”

The AI fell silent and Natasha’s voice took his place. “You back, Rogers?”

“Just got in,” he informed her.

“Good. Bruce and I are downstairs. We’ll see you shortly.” Her voice sounded distant, as if she were preoccupied by something. When Steve pressed, he could imagine her shaking her head. “It’s nothing. Just hurry.”

He found Banner waiting for him at the nurses’ station when he exited the elevator. The doctor looked a bit ragged. “Romanoff left to fend off the high level Shield personnel that just arrived,” he explained. “Somehow it got out about Barnes. Not about his… well, his condition but… news like this is hard to completely keep a lid on.” He shrugged helplessly. “And it’s not like I would be much help.”

Steve nodded in silent agreement. “How could they have found out? I thought you and Nat were keeping this quiet.” And Stark assured him the security in the Tower was unmatched by anything except for top-secret government venues.

Banner glanced up, defensive despite the lack of accusation of Steve’s voice. “We did.” He switched the camera view to the entryway several floors down where a throng of suits crowded around the elevators. Jarvis didn’t allow them entry. Natasha only positioned herself near them in case someone was intelligent enough to get past his security protocols. “We’re the only ones who should have known, aside from Jarvis, Dr. Callahan, and the three nurses. Director Fury personally vetted them and we’ve had them under constant surveillance and electronic lockdown. They haven’t contacted anyone.”

“What of Callahan? I don’t think I’ve met him.”

Banner snorted. “Her clearance level might be higher than Romanoff’s and she’s damn good at her job. She wouldn’t talk.” He leaned back. 

Steve ran a hand down his face and sighed. It was another problem to deal with on top of the ones he already faced. He turned toward the monitor display. Bucky was lying unconscious in his bed, swallowed by sterile sheets and pillows. “I thought using sedatives on a coma patient was dangerous.”

Banner shifted uncomfortably. “It is but we didn’t have much of a choice.” He paused. “He tried to escape and he collapsed. If we hadn’t done something, he could have hurt himself or someone else or…” He didn’t have to fill in what might have happened if an uncontrollable Bucky had met Banner’s bad side. “Dr. Callahan approved keeping him on a sedative, one that I developed for… well. She said it would be relatively mild on his brain since she’s not back to run a full panel herself.”

“I thought Nat said they were both in DC? To meet with Hill?” Steve asked.  
“I did. And she was,” Natasha answered, striding toward them, the situation downstairs apparently under control. “But her grandmother is in poor health so she’s staying there for right now. Jarvis is keeping her updated.” She slid into the chair in front of the monitor. “Someone couldn’t keep their mouth shut about our situation. Every important Shield agent and department head is clamoring for information, access, you name it. Fury’s working on containing it but until we find out who, we can’t this news from spreading.”

Steve asked, “Could we move to a more remote facility? Surely Stark has something that would work.”

“He’s not stable enough to move,” Banner warned.

“In what sense? I thought he was just suffering from amnesia.” 

Instead an answer, Natasha showed him the recordings of her and Banner’s interactions with Barnes before his sedation, translating the Russian as required. She held her breath after the video ended.

Steve was silent a moment before murmuring, “How did he know you?”

She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Rogers, did Barnes speak Russian? Off the record?”

“Bucky didn’t know Russian.”

Any remaining hope that Natasha had of Steve clearing up her experience in that hospital room was dashed. Her other questions died on her lips.

“When will he wake up?” Steve asked.

Banner offered a sad smile. “When Dr. Callahan gets back.”

Without another word, Steve walked into Bucky’s room and shut the door.

~~~

Dr. Callahan radioed in a couple of days later. Her grandmother had stabilized, freeing her to return to New York to add her thoughts to Barnes’ situation. Pepper Potts sent one of Stark’s private jets to collect her and she arrived at the Tower a few hours after her radio contact.

Natasha met her on the landing pad. The doctor tied her hair back as the jet took off, keeping it out of her face as wind gusted around her. 

“Rogers and Banner will meet us in the hospital wing,” Natasha said as they walked in.

“Stark hasn’t arrived yet?” Callahan asked.

“He doesn’t know. Jarvis tried to reach him but he’s involved in something upstate. We’ll debrief him when he contacts us.” 

“That should be a fun conversation,” Callahan retorted.

“About as much fun as telling Captain Rogers his best friend probably doesn’t remember him.”

That shut Callahan up.

Natasha handed her a tablet as the elevator doors opened. “These are Barnes’ scans and test results. Banner has kept them well-documented.” They walked into the elevator, the doors sliding shut behind them.

Callahan swiped through them, her brow furrowing more with each image. “Are these before or after you sedated him?”

“After. He wasn’t awake long enough to run them before.” Not to mention his terrified, almost violent reaction to seeing her. Callahan knew about that though.

A few more swipes and Callahan looked up. “We need him awake. The sedative may be altering these results and I don’t like what I’m seeing.” 

Natasha hesitated. “That might not be the best idea.”

Before Callahan could reply, the elevator doors slid open. They exited into the hospital wing and Banner shook her head when she arrived at the nurses’ station. “Good to see you again, Doc,” he said.

“Likewise.” She scanned the hallway in both directions. “Where’s the captain?”

“He hasn’t left Barnes’ side,” Natasha replied softly.

Callahan nodded. She’d never met him, but from what she knew of Rogers, his actions didn’t surprise her. “Let me see the footage before you sedated him.” She watched the brief interactions, muttering nonsensically over the Russian. “So he speaks another language when stressed… doesn’t remember the crash…” She stilled at one word, pausing the video. “Helicarriers?” 

“What? How could he know about those?” Banner asked, leaning forward. “Until Loki, I didn’t even know about them.”

Natasha exhaled. “And he knew the word in Russian. That’s- that’s impossible.” She kicked herself for not catching it at the time. 

“More questions and no answers,” Callahan mused. “Romanoff, Banner, it’s best if you wait outside until he’s fully awake. Jarvis?”

The AI replied immediately. “Yes, Doctor?”

“Are the security force fields ready for activation?”

“At your word, Doctor,” Jarvis assured her.

With that assurance, Callahan entered Barnes’ room. Rogers, worry etched into his face, sat beside his friends’ bed in one of those uncomfortable, plastic chairs found in every hospital room. Apparently, not even Stark could afford, or find, a better replacement. 

“Hello, Captain.”

He didn’t look away from Bucky. In fact, he didn’t act like he had heard her at all. The way he looked at Barnes tugged at her. Barnes was damn lucky to have someone that cared so deeply.

She tried again. “Captain Rogers.”

He tore his gaze away, masking the agony it took to do so before she was sure she’d seen it. “Dr. Callahan, right?” 

“That’s right.”

He stretched with a sigh, his body protesting the effort as he moved muscles that hadn’t moved in some time. “Stark said you’re the best at what you do. Fury vouched for you. Personally.”

She chuckled. “That’s a heavy load to put on me. In most situations, that might be enough. Here, I’m just not sure.”

“Why not?”

“Too many unanswered questions, too many unknowns that I’ve never heard of before, much less dealt with. We’re dealing with new terrain, Captain.”

He deflated, what little hope her arrival had brought leaving just as quickly. “What’s the plan?”

She sighed. “I need to take him off the sedative first. I reviewed his scans but until I get a clear and unbiased image, I know less about his head than you do.” 

“I’m not leaving,” he said, answering the words she hadn’t yet had the chance to speak.

“While I’m not sure it’s the best idea, I won’t force you to leave,” she conceded. “Just don’t make sudden or unnecessary movements or sounds.”

He slid his chair to the foot of the bed and returned to his vigil. “Thanks, Doc.”

While her patient was still sedated, she removed all the medical apparatuses hooked to him. She disconnected the IV line from Barnes’ arm and reattached a saline drip. The drug Banner developed functioned far more effectively as a sedative or anesthetic than most twilight drugs on the market. Having felt the effects of both, she vastly preferred Banner’s invention. After checking the IV one last time, she sat in the other uncomfortable chair and waited.

~~~

He woke with less confusion and pain than the last time. The lights above him were the same glaring fluorescent and he blinked as his eyes watered. Dr. Banner did not walk into the room as before. Another person in a white coat stood beside his bed, leaning over him and fiddling with one of the cords.

“I’m just checking your IV line. If you’re still feeling a little woozy, that’s the sedative wearing off,” she said, her voice jolting through him, recalling a bone-dry sense of humor and the image of a young woman in a wheelchair. But as she backed away and collected her tablet, he saw she walked normally. Her wheelchair was nowhere in sight. Had she lied before? What did that mean about the old woman? “I’m Dr. Rory Callahan. I’m a neurologist. Shield brought me in to consult on your case.” 

Shield? But that meant them. Part of him wanted to trust her but if she was working for _them…_

She glanced over her shoulder.

He followed her gaze and froze. If he hadn’t been prone in a bed, his legs would have given out. No amount of training could have prepared him for what he saw. His mission sat in a chair, his face contorted with worry. 

“Hey, Buck.”

_“People are gonna die, Buck…” –_

_\- “Steve!” he cried, struggling forward as the plane lurched._

_Steve risked looking at him. He barely managed to dodge the Red Skull’s punch, rolling off the catwalk onto the floor below –_

_\- falling from the helicarrier and slamming into the river. Dead. Dead. Dead. What had he done?_

He gasped, “No! You can’t be here!” but when he tried to sit up, Aurora was there, pressing him back onto the bed. He struggled against her, desperate to get away from this, the lies, _him_. How was _he_ alive? 

This was a test, he realized, a test of his loyalty to _them_. A test of how effective he could be in any situation. What they would do to him if he failed… 

“Sergeant Barnes, calm down.” Aurora spoke softly, gently, but her grip did not ease. She held him firmly. “The sedative is still clearing your system. If you continue to struggle, you will pass out.”

“Doctor…” He struggled not to cringe from that voice, the voice of the man he killed, the one who named him, who called him friend. The awful feeling that ate away him as he watched Steve fall threatened to consume him. He barely noticed Aurora’s grasp let up as she turned around.

She stared at a large display with several different readouts. Her head shifted as she studied each in turn. “What in the actual…?” she muttered. “Oh, what the hell, what the hell?”

“Something wrong?” 

She traced a highlighted portion of a scan. “Brain activity spiked. It just… it highlighted something and I- I’m not sure what it is.” She tapped at the display and the readouts changed. “Jarvis, I want everything recorded from here on out.”

The AI replied, “Of course. Shall I save the readouts from the scans as well?”

“Everything.”

He eyed her warily as she sat in a chair. His mission – Steve – leaned against the wall and kept his gaze resolutely anywhere but on him.

“Sergeant, what did you remember?” Aurora asked.

He couldn’t answer, glancing briefly at Steve. Was this his punishment, to be faced with his failure? Why was his mind doing this? Why would _they_ do this?

Aurora noticed a shift in the readouts. The tension in the air was thick enough to cut, not an environment conducive to recovering memories. She pulled Steve outside and whispered, “Captain, I think you need to leave.”

He tried to protest but she stopped him.

“Seeing you is distressing him and I won’t get any answers if he keeps clamming up.” She exhaled. “And his reaction to you bothered you. Badly. You can’t even look at him.”

Natasha walked over. “Rogers, we have a priority message. Fury needs us in DC.” She noticed the look on Steve’s face. “It’s not going well, is it?”

Steve stormed off.

Aurora replied instead. “It’s not going well at all. I’ll see what I can do.” 

Natasha nodded. “Good luck in there.” She dashed after Rogers.

“Thanks.”

Barnes watched Aurora come in alone and shut the door.

“Looks like it’ll just be the two of us for a while. The Captain was called away on duty,” she explained.

He still wouldn’t say anything.

That tactic wasn’t going to work so she decided to try something different. If he wouldn’t talk, she would. He had shown a subconscious ability to speak fluent Russian. Maybe she could get through to him with that.

“Do you remember my name?” she asked in slightly stilted Russian. It had been a few years since she spoke it and recalling the grammar and vocabulary returned slowly.

“You’re Aurora. Your grandmother, how is she?”

The fact he spoke shocked her into silence; that he spoke in Russian took a minute to process. She took another moment to process the actual question. “How do you know about my grandmother?”

Barnes hesitated. “The orange light,” he muttered. “She had the orange light.”

“You mentioned that to Dr. Banner. Do you know what that light was?”

He shook his head.

“Why did she have it?”

“She said it was a gift.”

Aurora shifted forward in her chair. “A gift? For what?”

The words came haltingly at first but he told her of his encounter with her grandmother. She only looked confused when he mentioned she was there and that she was in a wheelchair. He told her of the fight on the helicarriers and Steve Rogers’ death. “How could he be alive?”

“What you’re describing – it hasn’t happened,” she said. “We haven’t met before. No helicarriers have exploded over the Potomac. And the Captain is, as you saw, very much alive.” She held up a hand when he closed off. “I’m not saying I don’t believe you. I do. But what you’ve described, what you think happened, and what has happened are completely different.”

The answer didn’t satisfy him. Nothing she said convinced him this wasn’t a test. He struggled against the sheets to get out of bed but the loss of his arm hindered him. “What’d you do with my arm?” His voice shook.

“You lost your arm in the crash. A bulkhead collapsed, crushing the bone in your upper arm. When they pulled you from wreckage, they had to amputate…what was left.”

_\- he sniped two of the Red Skull’s cronies that were sneaking up on Steve._

_Steve whirled at the sound of gunshots only to see the soldiers drop like flies. He saluted –_

_\- the plane shuddered beneath them. Steve struggled to the pilot’s seat and tried to steady the craft._

_He gripped the railing as another shudder rocked the plane. “Steve!” Metal fell from the ceiling-_

_\- “Sergeant Barnes, you are to be the new fist of Hydra.” -_

“No! Stop!” He gripped his head, collapsing back against the bed.

Aurora rushed to help him.

_\- he wrapped his new hand, his metallic hand, around the surgeon’s throat and threw him across the room -_

He stared in horror as Aurora crumpled to the floor, clutching her face. His hand stung from the contact. They would freeze him for this. Or worse. 

They’d wipe him.

“Jarvis, can I get an ice pack please?” Her speech slurred around her face swelling. She met Barnes’ fearful gaze until she saw blood running down his arm. She was on her feet, gloving up, and gathering supplies faster than he could follow.

He held still while she grabbed his arm, pressed down on the IV port, and slid it out. She replaced her gloved hand with a cotton swab and pressed down harder, wiping up the blood with her other hand. Once she had bandaged his arm, she slid back onto the floor and shot her gloves into the trashcan.

Inexplicably, she burst out laughing. “Don’t- next time you punch someone, make sure you _don’t_ have an IV in your arm, okay?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really have no excuse for leaving this so long. Hopefully I'll be updating a little more frequently but it really depends on school and life and such.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies to everyone following Out of the Wreckage. I'm still working on it- promise. I just had this idea bouncing around in my head for a while. It's gonna be a little different so stick with me.


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